Golden Sweet x Absolute Zero

[Silverleaf]

I'm pretty sure I now have the muddy flower yellow pod combination!

It's a short plant (boo!) with darker leaves and it already looks darker than the wild type even though is hasn't opened yet. Guess we'll know for sure tomorrow!

If the dark yellow pod is worth carrying on I can easily backcross to Golden Sweet or another tall yellow.

[Galina]

Oh WOW! Congratulations Silverleaf.

All I can offer in return is a plant with a 'blunt' yellow pod, which looks quite strange.

[Silverleaf]

I'm not sure now but I don't think this flower is muddy after seeing it today.

I doubt it's magenta because the standard is a sort of washed-out mauve, but the wings are way too dark for muddy. It does definitely have darker leaves though so might have dp anyway perhaps.

[Silverleaf]

Same flower today. Still not fully open so I'm not 100% sure how to classify it.

[Silverleaf]

Looks like ordinary wild type now.

[Silverleaf]

This cross is tending to show a lot of antho in the stems, especially flower stems. This is the underneath of an axil.

[Silverleaf]

Couple more buds, this time from plants whose parents were magenta. These two plants both have a very bold single axil ring which you can see very well on the plant with the yellow calyx.

[Silverleaf]

Couple of magenta plants. Not as intense as last year but still look brighter than normal wild type.

[Silverleaf]

This one's from a magenta parent but it looks like a muddy yellow-podded type with slightly brighter standards. Maybe it'll have the dark yellow pods?

[Silverleaf]

Pod should be visible in the morning, perhaps.

[Silverleaf]

I couldn't tell much difference in pod colour, but it was only very tiny today - less than 1cm long. Will check again tomorrow.

[Silverleaf]

Yellow pod from this looks exactly the same as all the other yellow pods.

[Silverleaf]

Compare with this green-podded muddy (ordinary wild type in background).

[Galina]

My green and yellow podded ones (seeds from Silverleaf) look quite different from each other, mainly because of the yellow stems and calyx and pods vs green

[jayb]

Colour is amazing and even more so when shown alongside a wild type. Another looking forward to progress.

[Silverleaf]

Pretty cool, isn't it? I'll save you some magenta seeds!

[jayb]

Oooh yes please that would be awesome. I'm having another off year for peas sadly. I just couldn't get in gear to get the plot ready in time, (well I'm still working on it!) But I'm really pleased with the progress I'm making and my plan at the moment is to get everything ready by the autumn for a timely start next year. I've earmarked some space in the big poly for an early start-hopefully!

[Silverleaf]

Found a green-podded "muddy magenta" as well.

[Silverleaf]

Also an ordinary magenta because I never get tired of looking at them!

[Silverleaf]

Ordinary muddy flower fading into a kind of desaturated plum colour.

[Silverleaf]

Some of these flowers are just so intensely coloured - look how dark this one is and it's not even open.

[Galina]

Mine are never quite this dark. Maybe different soil minerals play a part?

[Silverleaf]

I don't know. This is by far the darkest plant, most aren't that intense.

[Galina]

Makes you wonder whether something else is going on there. These are stunning flowers. Hope they open fully.

[Silverleaf]

Can't stop taking pictures of these as they mature - I think this is the same dark flower from the last post. I love how the purple contrasts with the yellow calyx, just gorgeous!

[Galina]

Considering how early these started flowering, it seems to take an age for some of the pods to develop. Finally we have my 'rogues gallery' of all 5 plants grown. The first photo shows all of them, with the green pods #1 and #2 barely ready to harvest (a long way off dry, but just mature enough to be dried off on the windowsill). The second picture concentrates on the pod colour of #5. I don't want to open the pods yet to check whether the brownish colour on some of them is due to some plant illness or is a manifestation of the dp gene. But 3 pods show this to some extent and a couple more might be developing it.

There are 3 plant heights, short, 5ft and 6ft plus. There are 3 pod types, short, Golden Sweet type pods and blunt/wide pods. only #4 has the rough, pitted surface, the others are smooth like Golden Sweet pods.

All were magenta flowered, but not the 'muddy' type that looks so striking on your photos Silverleaf.

#1 green pods, non sweet mangetout on a short plant. The pods are short, develop slowly and have few seeds. The pod in the photo has only one seed, others (still on the plant) have perhaps up to 4.

#2 green pods, also developing slowly, shelling peas, the tallest plant at 6ft plus

#3 yellow pods, 5ft plant, shelling pea

#4 yellow wide blunt ended pod with rough surface, low yield, short plant. Due to low yield I did not taste these.

#5 yellow pods, some, but not all with brown shining through on 5ft plant Shelling pea.

[Silverleaf]

Thanks Galina, you have a varied selection there all right! The magenta colour seems to be a recessive trait as we've both had only magenta plants from magenta seeds. That's great news for stabilising a magenta variety!

I'm seeing similar variation in height - a few short 3' (or shorter) plants but most 5'-ish, a few about 6'.

Lots of possibilities for further breeding.

[Silverleaf]

Ooooh, I wonder if that brown is the fabled "dark yellow"?

[Galina]

Just harvesting the later pods on #1. They are bigger and have up to 6 seeds. The last plant to got strawy, development very slow overall.

[Silverleaf]

So from my observations and Galina’s it looks like the magenta is a recessive trait, which is excellent news. I suspect it’s a combination of genes working together rather than a single one but I’m only guessing, and to be fair it doesn’t really matter as long as the colour keeps breeding true. Looks like there’s some variation in the colour too. Perhaps we’re also seeing a combination with whatever causes muddy, with the muddy magenta flowers. A bit of a mystery!

Either way I’ll be growing out the F4 next year (and I can spare a few for Jayb and Hector too), with seeds saved from magenta plants. I didn’t bother to separate out yellow- and green-podded seeds but I probably will when I collect seeds next year because they really should be different projects. Green-podded magenta will be Margaret, yellow-podded will be Nellie.

I have seed from non-magenta plants too to act as emergency backup in case of hideous disasters...

I think the F4 is a good time to start doing some gentle selection for taste as well. I can easily taste a pod from each plant and mark the other pods if it’s particularly good or bad.